Following the defeat of efforts by Washington and London to ram the Ahtisaari plan through the UN Security Council earlier this month, the Empire seems to have pulled out all the stops in a campaign to achieve the independence of Kosovo, the Albanian-dominated, NATO-occupied southern Serbian province.

American and British ambassadors in Serbia have penned editorials in newspapers. Pro-independence "analysts" are spreading stories about how the "real agenda" in Belgrade is partition. Mainstream media in the West, from Reuters and AP to the New York Times, have run reports short on facts but long on speculation and wishful thinking. A top State Department official has come out openly endorsing independence. So has the German ambassador in Belgrade, creating a serious diplomatic incident.

Meanwhile, the Empire is trying to silence opposition to its Kosovo project within the EU, and seeking to bully Moscow with accusations of "repression" and "dictatorship." Having made a complete mess of the world in the past decade in attempting to dominate it, the American Empire is now stumbling into an open confrontation with Moscow over a sliver of land in the Balkans it illegally seized almost eight years ago.

Conspiracy Theories

Leading the propaganda onslaught was Marlise Simons, a New York Times reporter with much experience in manipulating reports from The Hague. Her reporting from the Milosevic "trial" has already been subject of extensive analysis, showing a clear pattern of misinformation and malice. Simons continued her efforts by attempting to spin the verdict of the World Court in March that found Serbia not guilty of atrocities in Bosnia. Now she has gone a step further; citing anonymous sources, Bosnian Muslim lawyer in the case, two Muslim judges who dissented from the ICJ ruling, and the professional Serbophobe Natasa Kandic, Simons has put together a claim that the verdict would have been different had the ICJ been given access to "secret documents" Serbia refused to provide.

Unlike the U.S., which has refused to furnish classified documents to both the ICJ (which it does not recognize) and the ICTY, Serbia has in fact provided classified documentation, only asking that it be protected from the public. Even the ICTY, on a mission to crucify Serbia as the mastermind of Balkans wars, complied with that request. The mysterious papers alleged to exist by Kandic and Muslim sympathizers are simply mythical. Simons' story is so outlandish it hardly deserves to be labeled conspiracy theory. And yet, it was widely reported and quoted, without question, in the days following its publication.